Syncretism in the Mediterranean: Universalism, Cultural Relativism and the Issue of the Mediterranean as a Cultural Area

Abstract

In this article we re‐examine notions of relativism and universalism in the history of anthropology through a re‐appraisal of anthropological research in the Mediterranean. In view of the fact of ongoing, public debates on how to bring about a new world order, we trace the notion of a clash of civilizations in intellectual history and depict early attempts to shed light on cultural techniques of exchange and cohabitation. By examining the material basis of all culture and the body‐techniques of visionary experiences, we will argue that creative human beings are apt to develop social and individual strategies for dealing with one’s own cultural heritage and with Otherness and its various transformations. Following Foucault and Deleuze we concentrate on different modes of “folding”, i.e. subjectivations, along which outside experience is transformed into inside experience and vice versa in order to explore the cultural basis on which resistance as well as any commitment to a “clash of civilizations” is negotiated. In the words of Marcel Mauss, “underlying all our mystic states are corporeal techniques…[and] biological methods of entering into communication with God” (Mauss 1979), and we argue that these have always had the potential to challenge dominant cultural politics and ideologies.

Keywords:

• Clash of Civilizations
• Mediterranean
• Monotheism
• Cults
• Syncretisms

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Hauschild

Thomas Hauschild is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.

Martin Zillinger

Martin Zillinger currently works as a researcher at the Human Collaborative Research Centre “Media Upheavals”, University of Siegen, focusing on Moroccan migrants’ media and religion in Brussels.

Sina Lucia Kottmann

Sina Kottmann studied cultural anthropology at Tübingen University and is currently conducting fieldwork in Andalusia for her doctoral dissertation.